RUTHFULLY YOURS

President Donald Trump’s speech concluding the Republican National Convention took full advantage of the country’s best public housing. Using the White House as a controversial but powerful backdrop, the president spoke directly to America. It was a chance to communicate unfiltered to voters, like his Twitter feed, without media spin.

The speech itself was effective, though it was too long and a bit flat as all teleprompter speeches are. Trump normally enlivens those by going off-script and inserting impromptu remarks. He didn’t do that this time, perhaps because the stakes were so high. The speech suffered for it.

The most important thing it did was frame the election as Trump against Joe Biden. That might seem obvious, but it’s actually different from how Democrats are framing the race. They want it to be a referendum on Trump and especially his often-abrasive personality. That’s why the speech’s harsh criticism of Biden had a second meaning. It reminded voters: You have to choose between me and the other guy, and he’s really bad. Both Trump and Vice President Mike Pence took advantage of Biden’s still-vague policy proposals by filling in the blanks. Naturally, they painted a picture of radical socialist transformation.

Another striking feature of the speech — indeed the whole GOP convention — was its emphasis on everyday Black families. The Republicans featured numerous African American speakers, some outlining how they had been helped by specific policies, such as criminal justice reform, others talking about Trump’s personal interest in them and their lives.

The goal wasn’t just to increase Trump’s share of the Black vote, which was only 8% in 2016. It was to reassure all voters that the president and his party are not bigots. American voters, to their credit, won’t support candidates they think are racist. Democrats and their media allies have said Trump and his party are. The convention was an effort to overturn that picture.

On urban unrest, deepening America’s racial cleavages in the midst of protests and riots would have been terrible for the country and terrible for Republicans as the party of “law and order.” So what the convention emphasized repeatedly was: No American should want this kind of violence.

No speaker made the point more effectively than Ann Dorn, the widow of retired St. Louis police Capt. David Dorn, killed trying to protect a store from looting. It was one of the most powerful moments at the convention. Trump underscored her personal story and tied it to the opposition party, which governs many cities beset by riots, arson and mayhem.

Trump’s emphasis on “promises made, promises kept” was a traditional victory lap, but it, too, had some additional purposes. First, it told voters that today’s Donald Trump is still an outsider, just as he was in 2016. He has not been captured by the Washington elite or their lobbyists. Second, he was laying the groundwork for a second-term agenda, which he will present over the next two months. That’s a crucial message because voters cast their ballots looking forward, not backward.

The decision to speak before a live audience, repeated throughout the convention, was also a smart one. It made the presentations livelier, more interactive, and gave helpful cues to viewers at home. But there was another, equally important reason: It prods Biden to do the same thing, to get out of his “basement” or pay a high price for staying there. The more Trump travels, speaks to groups, walks through factories, and interacts with voters, the harder it is for his opponent to avoid it.

Voters already are noticing that Biden is refusing to hold regular news conferences, appear on Sunday talk shows or take questions after his brief, scripted speeches. Biden needs to eliminate those doubts before they harden into fixed, damaging views about his limitations.

Now that Labor Day is approaching, the election is entering the final stretch. Polls and betting markets show it is getting tighter. It should shrink still more after the Republicans’ strong convention and the public’s growing revulsion at urban unrest. Voters are realizing that what happens in Minneapolis and Portland doesn’t stay there, and that Democrats have been very slow to condemn it. Trump drove home that point Thursday night. They will keep on making it until Nov. 3.

Charles Lipson is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he founded the Program on International Politics, Economics, and Security.